- 2 days ago
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely... Join us as we explore history's most bizarre and brutal authoritarian regimes! From leaders who claimed to descend from heaven to those who banned glasses and the word "intellectual," these dictatorships went beyond mere oppression to reach truly absurd levels of control, personality cults, and human rights violations.
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:00Together, we will make this country better.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, where we'll be discussing the most bizarre and brutal authoritarian regimes to ever exist.
00:14For the third time in three days, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, stepped out in public.
00:20This a change of sorts, his father, Kim Jong-il, was rarely seen.
00:25The Third Dominican Republic. Despite what its name implies, Dominica was dominated by dictator Rafael Trujillo for over 40 years.
00:35General Trujillo is the leader of the state and the government, public administration, and our national armed forces.
00:43He executes the laws, carries out the multiple businesses of the state, and represents the island in international relations.
00:51Like a lot of dictators, he had a major god complex.
00:55His slogan was, God in heaven, Trujillo on earth.
00:58Legally, citizens were required to have phrases like, Viva Trujillo, on their license plates.
01:04He once made his 16-year-old daughter queen, albeit for a world's fair, alongside his 14-year-old son, an actual colonel.
01:11Additionally, the dictator tried to get his illiterate wife awarded a Nobel Prize in literature, which failed.
01:18Trujillo was, of course, extremely brutal, once massacring thousands of Haitians in 1937.
01:24Eventually, he was assassinated in 1961 after being ambushed in his car.
01:29The future will crown the brave, the hard-working people, and we will walk towards it with confidence.
01:36Great socialist peoples, Libyan Arab Jamar Rahia.
01:40Get out of your homes and attack the rats in their dens, he shouted.
01:44They will be hunted down, alleyway by alleyway.
01:47Gaddafi took charge of Libya in 1969, and his rule didn't end until 2011.
01:53Unlike a lot of dictators, he didn't declare himself the supreme leader.
01:57Instead, he used the title, brotherly leader and guide of the revolution.
02:01He claimed the system was a direct democracy ruled by the people, free from political parties.
02:06Most of his critics disagreed.
02:08Old loyalties were being used in other ways, too.
02:12Many Libyan military officers had worked with the British during the years of rapprochement.
02:16Gaddafi called himself the emancipator of women and was protected by his revolutionary nuns,
02:22a chaste group of all-women bodyguards.
02:25The dictator also loved Botox, snakeskin boots, and fancy sunglasses.
02:30Human rights violations eventually motivated a rebellion in 2011,
02:34which resulted in Gaddafi's death by rebels in Sirta.
02:37We are not concerned about the standards of the governmentists and the rulers.
02:46They will disappear in future.
02:49The Second Republic of Uganda.
02:50I know exactly when, how, what time I am going to die. This I know.
02:57In 1971, Idi Amin seized power over Uganda after a successful coup.
03:02His rule was one of the most brutal in history.
03:04A year in, he expelled all Asians from Uganda, which caused a huge backlash globally.
03:10The motivation behind this was a dream where God supposedly told him to do it.
03:15Amin claimed to be the King of Scotland, but simultaneously sent Queen Elizabeth II bizarre letters.
03:21Uganda loves me because I am a loyal, and I am a fair.
03:31After Britain severed ties with Uganda in 1977, he gave himself the title Conqueror of the British Empire.
03:38Amin was deposed in 1979 by both rebels and the Tanzanian military, after he failed to invade a Tanzanian province.
03:45Since I came in power, automatically Uganda became revolutionary.
03:51Not only the armed forces, but the whole police, prisons, the whole public.
03:58Haiti.
03:59A missing Haitian would be unimportant and unnoticed, but a foreigner's arrest or death can be ordered only by the president, whose public holiday is now over.
04:08François Duvalier ruled Haiti with an iron fist for 14 years, starting in 1957.
04:14Like a lot of dictators, he was extremely paranoid.
04:17In 1959, he gave power to Clement Barbeau temporarily after falling ill.
04:22After recovering, Barbeau was imprisoned for apparently trying to seize power.
04:26It wasn't true until after he left prison, but his plot failed.
04:30Duvalier claimed Barbeau had turned into a black dog, then had all Haitian black dogs murdered.
04:37If you talk to a psychologist, they would classify him as a psychopath.
04:45Was he crazy?
04:48No, but was he evil?
04:51The answer is yes.
04:52Barbeau was found and killed, still in his human form.
04:56Duvalier was a big fan of voodoo, claiming it was how he had JFK shot.
05:01In the end, he was never brought to justice, dying of natural causes in 1971.
05:06His crimes haunt Haiti to this day.
05:10I think Haiti was permanently scarred and disfigured by Duvalier.
05:14The Republic of Zaire.
05:15Before it was the Democratic Republic of Congo, it was the authoritarian Republic of Zaire.
05:30Between 1971 and 1997, their sole president was Mobutu Sese Sekou.
05:35One of his wildest rules was to ban the media from mentioning anyone by name except himself.
05:41Additionally, the nightly newscast was forced to start with a clip of him descending from the heavens.
05:48According to Professor Romain Ngama, the dean of Badolet University,
05:51Said Mobutu maintained a strong media presence, making it difficult for the position to crush him.
05:56Another policy was forcing everyone to adopt an African name.
06:00If a priest baptized a child with a European name, they risked five years in prison.
06:05No one could challenge him, as he executed all of his opponents.
06:09Finally, a rebellion in 1997 forced him into exile, where he soon perished.
06:15I have the legitimacy of popular support behind me, which means that I've been elected for seven years.
06:21My mandate will end at midnight on the 4th of December, 1991.
06:27Equatorial Guinea.
06:29One of the most detestable despots in history was Francisco Macias Neguema,
06:34who controlled Equatorial Guinea between 1968 and 1979.
06:38Neguema's behavior was so wild that people thought he was literally insane.
06:42One Christmas Eve, he had 186 of his opponents executed on a football field to the tune of Those Were the Days.
06:51Wearing glasses was enough to get a death sentence in his rule.
06:55Both the word intellectual and fishing were also banned.
06:58In 1979, he was overthrown by his nephew.
07:03And many military men joined the protest, and we started to fight the regime, putting an end to a bloody regime.
07:10Neguema tried to flee, burning roughly $100 million in the process.
07:15His subsequent trial sentenced him to death 101 times.
07:19Equatorial Guinea soldiers wouldn't kill him, as they were worried his ghost would haunt them.
07:25So Moroccan soldiers had to do it.
07:27Matthias is thought to have killed between 50,000 and 80,000 people during his regime,
07:32and is now remembered as one of Africa's most brutal dictators.
07:36Bogambia.
07:37How long you stay in power does not determine your fate.
07:42It's what you do that determines your fate.
07:44As far as I'm concerned.
07:45Africa's smallest country suffered for over 20 years, on account of an exceptionally evil man taking control.
07:52Yahya Jame rose to power in 1996 and didn't lose it until 2017.
07:58Jame was a strong advocate for herbal medicine, believing it could cure HIV AIDS.
08:03Jame says he has magical powers.
08:06He claimed to have found a special cure for AIDS.
08:08But he needed more than magic to take on the young Gambians who, in December, voted him out of power.
08:15Of course, it didn't work, therefore increasing the spread of the illness.
08:19Yahya Jame frequently targeted journalists, saying that they should be, quote,
08:23buried six feet deep for criticizing him.
08:25After he believed his aunt died of witchcraft, he abducted 1,000 Gambians suspected of witchcraft.
08:31Since 2017, he's lived in exile in Equatorial Guinea.
08:36The man who said he would rule Gambia for a billion years was finally forced into exile, bringing to an end his 22-year rule.
08:44The Democratic People's Republic of North Korea.
08:47You need to learn about, thank you so much, our supreme leaders and all the time in front of their pictures.
08:55Since its founding in 1948, North Korea has been ruled by Kim Il-sung, their eternal president.
09:02Even though he died in 1994, he's still officially their president, making them the only necrocracy in the world.
09:10Their current living ruler is his villainous grandson, Kim Jong-un, who is considered by many to be one of the worst criminals alive.
09:17The local press here, or, let's be honest, propaganda, is pretty pointless, unless you want photos of Kim Jong-un pointing at things,
09:26and headlines like, why all the fuss about human rights?
09:31He rules with an iron fist, with harsh punishments for stepping out of line.
09:35It's virtually impossible to escape, with there being fewer than 100 defectors annually since 2021.
09:41Tourism is allowed, but it's heavily controlled, and all the money spent goes towards upholding a despicable regime.
09:49The sound of cheering crowds had been pre-recorded.
09:53Some band members didn't seem to be playing their instruments,
09:56and bits of soldiers' gear look suspect, like these plastic-looking grenades.
10:01The Central African Empire.
10:03A man who wants to be more than a king, and whose portraits are still sold in the streets of Bangui today.
10:09In 1976, Jean Bedel Bokassa made himself emperor of the Central African Republic, turning it into an empire.
10:17He was a man heavily inspired by Napoleon.
10:20For his coronation, he wanted the Pope present, so Bokassa could take the crown from him,
10:25making himself emperor in the same way Napoleon did.
10:28The Pope never appeared, however.
10:30Bokassa also is said to have had a taste for human flesh, which he supposedly served to foreign ambassadors.
10:35In 1979, a coup forced him to relinquish power.
10:44He spent seven years in exile in the Ivory Coast and later France.
10:48In 1986, Bokassa returned and was immediately arrested, then tried.
10:53He was spared the death penalty, getting imprisoned until 1993, then died three years later.
10:58It's true that he ran the country with an iron fist, some would say without velvet gloves.
11:04I don't know if doing it as it was done then would be a solution for us now,
11:09but I think that we still need firmness to hold the country together.
11:12Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
11:18You have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them.
11:22If you're on your phone, make sure you go into settings and switch on your notifications.
11:29Turkmenistan.
11:30Despite the shows of popularity he staged, he leaves in his wake not so much loss, but a vacuum.
11:36This Central Asian nation came under the rule of Saparmarat Niazov in 1985,
11:41who turned it into a horrific and strange dictatorship.
11:44For example, you were not allowed to have long hair or a beard until the age of 70.
11:49The president made it almost a requirement to read his book.
11:53To get a government position or a driver's license, you had to pass a test on it.
11:57To help him quit smoking in 1997, he banned everyone else from doing it in public.
12:02After independence, he made himself president and started calling himself Turkmenbashi,
12:09the leader of the Turkmen.
12:11A few years later, his title got upgraded to Bayek Turkmenbashi, Turkmenbashi the Great.
12:19Dogs weren't allowed in the capital, and all hospitals outside of it were also banned.
12:24Since his death in 2006, the country has had two more dictators.
12:28They're slightly more relaxed, but still incredibly oppressive.
12:32Were there any particularly wild regimes we forgot to mention?
12:41Let us know in the comments below.
12:43The country belongs to a notorious control freak,
12:48President Turkmenbashi.
12:50And he's got it sealed up tighter than a jar of gherkins.
12:54Let us know in the comments.
Recommended
12:53
|
Up next
33:49
5:56
11:23
11:25
36:20
2:25
1:18
2:15
1:24
1:59